One Man's Notes on Movies and Other Life Obsessions by Chuck Wilson

August 29, 2016

“Gene Wilder stares at the world with nearsighted, pale-blue-eyed wonder; he was born with a comic’s flyblown wig and the look of a reddish creature from outer space. His features aren’t distinct; his personality lacks definition. His whole appearance is so fuzzy and weak that he’s like mist on the lens. Yet since his first screen appearance, as the mortician in Bonnie and Clyde, he’s made his presence felt each time. He’s a magnetic blur. It’s easy to imagine him as a frizzy-haired fiddler-clown in a college production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, until he slides over into that hysteria which is his dazzling specialty. As a hysteric, he’s funnier even than Peter Sellers. For Sellers, hysteria is just one more weapon in his comic arsenal—his hysteria mocks hysteria—but Wilder’s hysteria seems perfectly natural. You never question what’s driving him to it; his fits are lucid and total. They take him into a different dimensions—he delivers what Harpo promised.”